THE POOR BOY AND RICH GIRL

NOTE: This text was recopied
directly from a typewritten copy in the archives of the Blue Ridge Institute.
James Taylor Adams (1892-1954) kept typewritten copies of the folklore
he and others collected during the last thirty years of his life, while
he lived in Wise County, VA. Typographical errors in the original have not been corrected, except for
some obvious
errors in spacing.

"I call this the "Walt Maples Tale" because he told it to me. A poor boy was
going with an upstate girl. Her father was very rich and he told the girl
his father was rich as he could be. He looked through the forest and told
her his father owned all kinds of land, and hogs, so many, that mortal eye
had not seen them all. He made her believe he was rich and they married.

She wanted to go see her people on the honeymoon and they went. Then he
wanted her to go and see his people. They was poor as jobs turkey and the
day they arrived his father had killed a bald eagle and they had it on
cooking. That was all they had to eat. She saw how poor they was and made a
riddle:

I just now returned from Arkansaw,

Such a dish I never saw,

Hail Columbia, happy land,

If I ain't ruint, I'll be dammed.

She wrote a check for five hundred dollars and give it to the boys mother
and told him to stay there and take care of his parents."